“My mother and I came here for two weeks at Christmas, your grandmother. How she would have loved you! It’s a pity you never met, but then I daresay you will like Jane’s brother very well, and Jane’s mother, and Edmund, and of course your cousins.
“Where was I? I suppose I was going to remind Freddie about the widow McReary, but perhaps he wouldn’t remember. I do. It was a cold day, there may even have been snow. McReary was the wife of a farmer who lived four or five miles south of here, upon a little allotment, two acres, perhaps three. He died, a cataleptic fit as I recall.”
How many years had it been since anyone discussed Frank McReary? Lenox wondered as he pushed Sophia along. Yet villages have long memories, and he had, no doubt, had cousins and nephews and uncles in Plumbley and the countryside around it. Look at Weston.
Sophia sent up a fidgety noise, not quite a cry, perhaps because her father had fallen silent. He resumed his story. “Shall I tell you something about the widow McReary? She was a thief! I don’t know if she became a thief before her husband died or after — she was childless, so she must have had a terrible time with the farm — but she was known in town to be a thief.
“Freddie was magistrate back then, too, you know, and could have put her in the dock with a dozen witnesses against her — she stole at the Sunday market, which earned her no friends, picked vegetables that weren’t hers, for all we knew stole from the church plate. And in fact my mother — who was a very gentle soul, not much for punishment — advised Freddie to have Mrs. McReary up in court.”
He could see miles and miles of westward country rising upward away from him as he walked along slowly, hedged into tidy squares and rectangles, mostly a lovely shamrock green but with lined fringes of red and orange and golden trees. It was the kind of vista that reminded you that you were in England, that lifted your heart. He thought of Parliament and his place there with a flash of solemnity and deeper comprehension. The world was a larger place than one ever seemed to remember.
Sophia started to squirm and her father, in his calming voice, began to speak to her again. “What Freddie did, however, was something more intelligent. He enquired about her condition. He spoke to her younger sister, who lives still in Plumbley I believe, and to her brother, whom I know must be dead by now — he was well beyond sixty then. Though perhaps not, perhaps I’ll ask Fripp if he’s still alive, since Freddie doesn’t want to hear it.
“He asked her friends. The people who had been her friends. They weren’t any longer. Which is one of the many reasons you must never steal, Sophia.” He frowned at the child, comically, and she smiled up at him. “And what did Freddie learn? That she was close on starving, the widow. She was perhaps too proud for help, or it may be that she simply liked to steal. I don’t claim that she was any saint, of course.
“So he …,” Lenox looked up at the skyline, eyes narrow, contemplating his visit of all those years ago. “It was one of the first times I had an understanding of justice, of its fluidity,” he said. “There have been more than a few times when I looked the other away, during a case, you know. It was Freddie who taught me that lesson.”
His eyes were still up, and he had come to a stop. He glanced back at the house, some ways off now, its beautiful yellow stone, the white paint around its windows.
He shook his head briskly, as if to clear it, and began walking again. “So he put her in the way of something good to steal. He visited her — stopped in on his way to a nearby farm, he said, to ask if she still had any quince preserves laid down that he might buy, for Christmas supper — which she didn’t — and he left behind a billfold and, so that it might not seem like charity, a pair of gloves. I was with him, if you can credit that. Seems like yesterday.”
They were some ways off from the house now, the pace of the dogs slackening, and Lenox decided he would go in. As they set back toward the house, he said, “I know she didn’t return the billfold, or the gloves, in the next week. After that I was gone. I don’t know what became of her.”
He thought back to that time with a quick, piercing sorrow. How strange to be forty-five and miss one’s mother, like a child in nursery!
As they returned he told Sophia other stories, allowing his voice to float soothingly over her, not especially listening to himself. He was thinking. It was a pleasure to walk with his daughter, but perhaps more importantly he understood, without acknowledging the feeling, that the facts of the case were revolving in the back of his mind, latching together, leading him somewhere. He was almost there. It wouldn’t be long now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Upon his return Lenox learned from Nash that Frederick was waiting to see him in the drawing room of the house. As he and Sophia entered the room, his cousin was having a quiet word with Miss Taylor.
“You must give me a tour,” she was saying.
“With great happiness. We have some flowers blooming even this late, Rodgers and I. The autumn snowflake in the bay by the east window is especially beautiful, though very, very delicate. Leucojum autumnale. We picked them up in Chelsea this spring, the bulbs. They’re Iberian by origin.”
As Frederick was delivering this short lecture the governess had nodded and, at the same time, gone to Sophia, taking her up in her arms. “Did she enjoy the walk?” Miss Taylor asked Charles.
“Tolerably well, I daresay. It started raining again toward the end, but a little damp shouldn’t harm her too much, should it? And she was covered for all but a moment by the umbrella.”
“I will listen to her chest. I have a device. Though I’ve no doubt she’s fine — blooming, like your uncle’s flowers.”
She was worth the money they were paying her, Lenox reflected. “Thank you. And, Freddie, you wished to see me?”
“Yes, come and sit down here.” Both men stood until the governess had left, and then sat, silent, while a footman wrestled the pram back into some discreet corner of the front hall. “It’s about the coach drivers.”
“Oh?” said Lenox.
“We’ve asked about half of the drivers who were along the roads last night if they saw two riders a-horseback. None of them did. We’ll ask the rest as they trickle in this evening.”
“Would you have expected them to?”
“They all seemed fairly definite that they would have spotted anything out of the ordinary. Then again it is possible to sneak on and off the roads, ride across open country …”
Lenox shook his head. “No, standing in that clearing, I felt — I think those were Plumbley horses. I think perhaps they were even left there to be found. How many men in town, and in the surrounding country, have two horses?”
“At least thirty, in all likelihood closer to forty. Several just in the town of Plumbley, for a start. Many of those old houses have stables attached to them — Dr. Eastwood’s, Musgrave’s, even Fripp’s.”
“Could you make a list of the names of all these men?”
“I’ll ask my groomsman to do it. He’ll know a sight closer than I would who has what in the way of horseflesh.”
“Excellent. And the canvass—”
“Nothing, I’m afraid.”
“It was still worth the try. Did you see Oates?”
“He was off to meet with a representative from the police force in Bath, last I saw him.”
Lenox furrowed his brow. “Is that common?”
“If there’s a murder in these parts one of the larger constabularies will usually check for themselves the proper steps have been followed.” Frederick looked pensive for a moment. “Charles, do you feel you have any idea of who killed Weston, the poor lad?”
“Nearly,” said Lenox.